


Black & White

by Polly_Lynn



Category: Castle
Genre: Didn't Know They Were Dating, F/M, First Dates, First Kiss, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Movie Night, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-10
Updated: 2015-06-10
Packaged: 2018-04-03 20:31:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4113985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Lynn/pseuds/Polly_Lynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He doesn't want this to end. Deeply, viscerally, with her licking strawberry milkshake from a long, slender spoon, he absolutely does not want this evening to end any time soon."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Black & White

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: One shot tag for The Third Man (2 x 14).

 

 

 

He doesn't want this to end. Deeply, _viscerally_ , with her licking strawberry milkshake from a long, slender spoon, he absolutely does _not_ want this evening to end any time soon.

_Ever_ , something wicked whispers inside him. He punches it down, because that's . . . problematic. That's the shortest route to this and _everything_ ending for good and all.

_Ever,_ it says again. Not a whisper at all this time. He scowls. She catches him. Laughs, like there's nothing more amusing than the way his rich internal life plays out all over his face, and this is getting away from him.

Everything is getting away from him, so he digs in. Focuses. He doesn't want _this_ to end. Tonight. She came out with him. Slipped her arm through his ( _and wouldn't let him carry the damned garment bag_ ) and ordered an _enormous_ quantity of food without the barest flicker of self-consciousness ( _and shanghaied the waiter to pay the bill when he wasn't looking_ ).

But she came out with him, and she likes the tie. She likes the jacket and the shirt, and he _knows_ because she keeps flicking these glances his way. She keeps her eyes mostly on her shake and her plate of fries, sure, but there are all these tiny glances through her lashes, too, and he is _not_ going to let this end here.

"You've seen it, right?" He opens his mouth and it falls out.

She looks up at him, perplexed, and no wonder. It's a complete non sequitur that _he's_ still catching up with.

"The movie," he clarifies for both of them, but it doesn't help. Because it's not a clarification at all. " _The Third Man._ "

Oh. So that's what he means. Ok?

Or not ok, maybe. Not ok with _her._ She takes another pull on her shake. It's a hollow, bottom-of-the-glass sound that makes him panic. Makes him panic _more_.

"You called him that, didn't you?" She raises an eyebrow, and brings her napkin to her mouth, torturing him silently. "Come on. You _must_ have called him that."

He sneaks a fry from her plate, trying for cool, but it goes down the wrong way and he's choking. She takes mercy on him and pushes her water glass across the table. He waves her off, nodding hard that he's fine—he's _fine_ —even though he's not. He's a nervous wreck and he does _not_ want this to end.

"Didn't call him that."

She sets down her napkin and leans back against the booth. There's a depressing finality to it. He feels his face fall. His posture deflate and he's powerless to stop it. He shifts on the bench, fishing for his wallet. He'll leave the tip, at least. He's prepared to make a scene if she tries to keep him from _that._

"Pieces of it," she says. A non sequitur of her own. She's fiddling with the silverware. Swapping the empty silver shake cup with the pedestal glass and trading them back again. Nervous little motions and he looks at his own hands, curiously stilled for the moment, his fist still wrapped around a few bills. She flattens her palms on the time table like she's thinking it, too. About this strange, sudden reversal. She looks up at him. "In a film class, we watched pieces."

"You've never seen the whole thing?" He leans in when she shakes her head. "Oh, you've gotta. I mean, Welles, of course, but Joseph Cotten . . . and the screenplay. Graham Greene. He only wrote one other and it's . . . " He sounds too eager. Too much like his voice might break any second. He clears his throat, paranoid. "It's . . . you should . . ."

"You have it?"

Their eyes lock and he'd swear he sees her swallowing hard. He's swear it's a struggle to keep her hands still, and he'd swear there's a little pink in her cheeks.

"Oh, just the Criterion Collection Blu-Ray." He puffs out his chest. An over-the-top nerd brag to make her laugh.

"Come on." She pushes to her feet and grabs his wrist. She pulls him up and tugs the cash from his fingers, dropping it on the table.

"Come on?" It comes out suspicious. Wary, and he can't make his feet move.

She rolls her eyes, three steps closer to the door than he is already. "Do I have to invite myself over?"

"No!" He practically shouts it, hustling to slip his arm through hers for the second time in as many hours. "You have to come over, Beckett. Right now. I insist."

* * *

 

 

Alexis is up. His mother is up. It's the middle of the damned night, and everyone is up, and he'd like to die. Or kill them. Or both.

"Dad!" Alexis doesn't miss a beat. "And Detective Beckett."

She doesn't miss a beat, but her eyes travel from his jacket and tie to the garment bag he'd smuggled out the cab's street-side door. She'd glared— _hard_ —but finally let him carry it, and _that_ is going in the victory column. Or it was. Now it's raising eyebrows and prompting significant glances, so it goes in the newly created, rapidly growing _unbearably awkward_ column.

"And how were our . . . _dates_?"

His mother's pause—the heaviness of her glance—has him leaning hard toward the _kill them,_ end of the spectrum, especially when Alexis blurts a stream of questions about puppies and what month _Brad_ was and how does she even _know_ about that?

"Interrupted." Beckett saves them both with it. Shoots him a sidelong _you-owe-me_ glance.

"The case," he says, picking up the thread and getting his feet back under him. He herds the two of them toward the stairs, talking loud to cover their protests. "I can tell you all the harrowing details tomorrow."

"Ask him about the spider," Beckett calls after them.

He whirls on the landing with a dirty look, locked and loaded. Alexis's head pops up over his shoulder, ruining the effect entirely.

"A spider? Did he scream."

She looks past him to give Alexis a narrow-eyed grin. "Like a horror movie prom queen."

* * *

 

 

She's standing awkwardly, right where he left her, when he heads back down the stairs. She's staring at the garment bag he's draped over a stool and everything about her says _second thoughts_.

"Still up for it?" He hears himself ask and wants to kick himself. She's _here._ She _invited_ herself and he's kind of thinking about stapling her to something so she can't leave. There's exactly no part of him that wants to give her an out. No part of him except his tongue apparently.

"Yeah," she says quickly, then hesitates. "I am, I mean. But if you're too . . . we can . . . another time . . ."

" . . . No. No!" They're talking over each other. Standing in the no man's land between front door and living room, easily three school-dance lengths apart. "No. I'm good. I'm . . . kind of wired."

"Me too." Breath rushes out of her. A smile with it. "Kind of . . . up for a while."

"Yeah," he says. They stand there another few awkward moments until he remembers something like manners. "The office. It's um . . . the only real TV is . . ."

He starts toward it, muttering stupid things about Alexis not liking the idea of one in the kitchen. His mother insisting that it's gauche to have one in the _conversation grouping_ in the living room. She follows. She's laughing at him. He can feel it. Her amusement climbing his spine, but it's better than the alternative. It's better than standing there staring at each other. Giving second thoughts a fighting chance.

"Here good?"

He turns in the act of swinging the flat panel out from the wall. He's had his back to her. Too nervous for anything else, but she's rolling the big arm chairs forward and close together like they do this all the time.

"Yeah. Exactly right."

He sounds _way_ too awed, like working out the sight line to the TV is the accomplishment of the century. It gets him another raised eyebrow. He tugs at the knot in his tie, just for something to do that's not 100% dorky. But her eyes fall away and he's suddenly conscious of the bedroom door standing open and the fact that he's flipped up his shirt collar and already made it to button number four. It's just routine. Mindlessness and nerves getting the better of him, but he knows he's one second from scaring her away.

"Wine," he blurts out desperately. Too loud. "Can I get you some wine?"

"Wine. Yes." That's too loud, too, but she's laughing. At him. At herself as she falls back, sprawling in the chair that swallows her up. "Wine would be _great_."

* * *

 

 

She shushes him. He knows he's being a pest, but now that she's settled in—now that her shoes are kicked off and she's sipping wine—he's sure of her and eager. He wants to point out everything he loves about the movie. The score. Tidbits about tricking Selznick into fronting money for it. Welles needing the paycheck just then. He wants to know if she's been to Vienna. If she wants to go—right now.

"Come on, Beckett." He nudges her elbow where it sits close to his, spanning the tiny gap between chairs. "We could be there by dinner."

She shoots him a glare for that. Shushes him again and turns his chin pointedly back to the screen, her own following.

She's fixated. Totally immersed, and he's quiet soon enough. Watching _her_ watching and wordless with it. The way her eyes go wide at the lush sweep of lights across a scene. The set of her jaw and the hard curl of her fingers as Harry Lime looks down on the city, reducing his victims to dollars and cents. The way the fine hairs on her arm raise and she shivers as the music of the zither winds higher and higher.

The story unfolds and she's rapt. He's caught in the moment and watching the clock at the same time. Fascinated by her ever-changing face and the way the light from the screen silvers her skin. Anxious that every second is one closer to the whole thing coming to an end.

Her head sinks lower. She's as tired as she is wrapped up in the movie. Her cheek comes to rest on the wide arm of the chair a while, but it's not long before her nose wrinkles. She sits back up, blinking.

"Here," he says quietly, reaching back and down for one of the throws that wound up on the floor and spreading it over the arm. "Sorry about the . . . it's . . ." he gestures to the leather. "Sticky. Sorry."

She scowls at him. Softens it with murmured thanks and a contented sigh as she curls herself tighter in the chair and worries the fabric between her fingers before settling again, palm trapped between her cheek and the blanket's warmth.

He settles, too. He _tries_ to settle. Angles himself toward her body, then away, because he can't watch her from this corner, but she's _way_ too far away from that one, and he wants both. He wants to feel the flare of her shoulder blades against his chest while his chin rests in the hollow of her neck. He wants his own gaze to follow hers and have the luxury of his lips at her ear.

A fucking _couch._ That's what he wants. A damned couch in his office and not these stupid chairs with almost zero opportunity for incidental and not-so incidental contact. He's grumbling to himself. Shifting loudly enough that he doesn't hear it at first. The slow, mournful sweep of the zither, swelling. Louder and louder.

He sits up, disbelieving, but there it is. The bleak, patient shot. A skeletal colonnade of trees and the lone figure of Anna growing larger every second. Approaching. Breaking the frame entirely and passing out of sight. He can't believe it. He won't and he wants to protest. He wants to scramble for some excuse better than a whole second disk of extras, but her voice stops him.

"Beautiful," she says. Quiet and awed. Beyond tired, and soft with it. "How is everything so beautiful in black and white?"

 

* * *

 

It seems right to let her go then. To let things end on a moment like that. It feels right and wrong at the same time. He's still thinking about stapling her to something, which probably goes in the _wrong_ column.

But it's nice, even as she's going. The companionable way things winds down as she digs her shoes out from under the chair and revels in the softness of the throw as she folds it. Drapes it over the back of the chair, still warm from her body, and lets her hand trail over it a minute.

"Don't worry about it." She's reaching for their glasses. For the half-full wine bottle. "I'll get it," he says, but she brushes past him anyway and heads right for the dishwasher. Right for the vacuum pump and one of the rubber seals for the wine where a row of them rest on the bar. He trails behind her wondering when this happened. Wondering how it came to be that she knows all these little things about his home and not minding at all.

She gets to her coat before he can. She has it on by the time he makes it to the foyer, and the look she gives him is pure challenge as she rucks up the short ends of her hair, stiff with spray, and frees them from her collar. He grabs the garment bag in answer. Holds it high as she glares and buttons up.

She fusses with her scarf. Tucks and untucks it. Leans against the doorframe and looks up at him like she's caught. Like she's lingering every bit as much as he is, and she knows he knows.

"This was . . . nice." She smiles at him. A quick glance up and then down at her shoes, like she hears too late how her choice of words might be inclined to make his heart sink and she doesn't mean it like that. "I can see how you could be . . ." She rolls her eyes. Performing a little too much, but . . . flirting too. She's _flirting._ " _. . ._ kind of _fun_ on a date."

"Could be?"

She's shushing him before it's even out of his mouth, as well she might. It's loud. _Affronted._

"Ex _cuse_ me, Detective." His voice drops to the lowest tone possible. "I was just a _ton_ of fun on a date."

"Oh, you think this was . . ."

He drops the garment bag. He buries his hands her hair. He kisses her. Too hard and awkward at first. A total gamble that bangs their teeth together, but he pulls back and her eyelids are just fluttering open. Her lips are parted, and she's breathless. Leaning in. He gets it right the second time. The angle of approach and the perfect sweep of his lips over hers. The answering flick of her tongue when he nips at the corner of her mouth and the weight of his body pressing hers against the door.

"I _definitely_ think it was," he breathes, tearing himself away, gratified that the pulse thumping where he holds her wrist might just outdo his own. "Don't you?"

"Jury's still out."

She clears her throat. She stoops and gathers up the garment bag tangled between their ankles. She reaches behind her for the door handle, her head tipped so far forward that he can hardly see the flush on her cheeks. She backs into the hallway and he's speechless. Paralyzed and kind of appalled that she's just _going_ like this.

She turns away. Takes a step and turns back, her shoulders squared. She looks him in the eye and he sees her cheeks are burning. Her eyes are dark and she wants to _run._ She doesn't though.

"Jury's still out," she says again and she sails right into him. A hard, awkward kiss of her own. "But I think . . ." She pulls back a fraction of an fumbles the garment bag to the crook of one elbow. Her fingers come up to curl around the two ends of the tie he'd long since forgotten about.

"You think?" His lips hover just shy of her skin.

"I think it looks good, Castle." Her eyes slip closed. "I think it looks pretty good."

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Hope you had the toothbrush handy after this one. OY! The sweet. It burns. Thanks for reading.


End file.
